[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] Intermittent hard drive problem -- help?!

resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Philip Resnik) (09/15/90)

THE COMPUTER: Multitech Acer 910 (80286), with Seagate 40Meg drive,
Western Digital (WAH-1003) hard drive controller.

THE PROBLEM: On power-up, the hard drive light goes bright for a
second, then dims.  Instead of brightening up again and seeing booting
from the hard drive, I receive a message, "Unable to boot from hard
drive 1.  Press F1 to continue."  I'm then told to insert a system
disk in drive A --- after booting from drive A, the C drive is
unrecognized (invalid drive).  

If, instead, I start with a system floppy in A, I receive the message 
"Unable to initialize hard drive 1", and the machine boots from A ---
once again, the C drive is then unrecognized.

WHAT I'VE DONE: After trying basic things like re-seating the
controller card in its slot, cleaning the contacts, etc., I brought
the machine to a computer repair shop.  They re-formatted the hard
drive, ran diagnostics, and told me that everything was fine.  After I
brought the machine home, it worked for a few hours, but the next time
I powered up, the exact same problem recurred.  I brought it back
(labor good for 90 days, they say), and left it with them.  After a
week or so, I was told that the machine had displayed *no problems at
all* in their shop: they'd powered up and down many times, re-seated
the card, run diagnostics for hours on end (long enough to detect any
thermal problems).  They told me that if I could reproduce the problem
in their shop, they'd be happy to look at it... I couldn't.

Have you guessed?  I brought the machine home, and it worked for a
day, and then this morning the same problem happened again.  I'm
currently working from the A drive only --- and I don't know what to
do next.  I brought it to a professional shop, and that didn't solve
it.  What's left?  (My wife suggests it's a gypsy curse, but I have my
doubts...)

If anybody has seen a problem like this before and can make a
suggestion, please let me know --- preferably via e-mail to
resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu.  My computer and I would much appreciate
your assistance.

  Philip


resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu
Computer and Information Science, Moore School of Engineering
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104

jims@pro-berks.cts.com (Jim Sloan) (09/18/90)

In-Reply-To: message from resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu

Have you tried checking your CMOS?  This has happened to me on occassion when
the CMOS was in correctly set or the battery was dead (which will default to
standard CMOS, no drives installed)  Most CMOS will hold memory info for up to
4 hours without a battery, but after that it reset to default.  If your CMOS
continually changes, then the battery is dead.
Phoenix Systems Software
P.O. Box 2525
West Lawn, PA 19609
represent their views.

daves@oldcolo.UUCP (Dave Sawtell) (10/04/90)

My theory is that the part of the disk that stores the partition data
may not be storing the partition data accurately.  If you know what
the partition data on your disk should be, run fdisk (while the disk
isn't working) and see if the data on the disk is what it should be.

If the data is not correct, the only solution I can think of to your
problem is to reconstruct the partition data using fdisk every time
the disk goes down. (If you do this, make sure you do it accurately
becuase a slight error can couse big problems.)